I am grateful for the steadfastness of Lisa in trying times, mostly caused by me. She is a righteous strength to me. She is both encouraging and an effective check against my pride, which I feel inspired to expand upon and speak about.

Tuesday night at the motel story - this feels telestial then not quite yet, redemption is still available and the Lord's hand is still stretched out to us.

Schrodinger's cat

Schrödinger's Cat, as a thought experiment, states that if you seal a cat in a box with something that can eventually kill it, you won't know if the cat is alive or dead until you open the box. So, until you open the box and observe the cat, the cat is simultaneously dead and alive.

https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/schrodingers-cat

and the idea that we haven't been judged yet (the box has not yet been opened), so our fate is not yet sealed, except that…

We can end the Lord's redemptive "hand-out" either individually or as societies as explained in the Book of Mormon.

Arrogance from "I am a Child of God"

Our beloved primary song can get us into trouble. As this "child of God", we may think we deserve something because of this relationship, like a never-ending stream of fine food or a graduation car or a payed-for college experience. For my part, I feel that being a "child of God" should speak more to our responsibility first to the Lord and then to our neighbors as the two great commandments say.

It may not sound like the careful "pussy-footing" minefield of fathering today's children, for instance, that Western cultures demands, but we have to reconcile ourselves to the Lord's ways rather than the other way around.

I do know that in 1957, then-Elder Spencer W. Kimball asked Naomi Randall, the author of the lyrics of “I Am a Child of God” to change the lyrics from “Teach me all that I must know/ To live with Him someday” to “Teach me all that I must do/To live with Him Someday.” Kimball explained, “To know isn’t enough. The devils know and tremble; the devils know everything. We have to do something.”

https://segullah.org/all-that-i-must-be

Dallin H. Oaks has mentioned this change a few times in General Conference talks and added to the idea by not just knowing and not just doing, but by becoming what our Heavenly Father wants us to be, like Christ and like him.

Perhaps, the lyrics will be changed again and it will become "Teach me all that I must BE/To live with him someday" !

In a paraphrase from the commandment, we are to bring "honor" to our parents, including God our Father (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/ex/20?lang=eng&id=p12#p12). This is a major responsibility of children (no matter their age) throughout their lives, "that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." The matter of our longevity in the chosen land is going to see some further treatment as we proceed!

Moses Learns some Important Lessons about Himself

An early example of pride actually comes from Moses, who usually seems pretty humble.

10 And it came to pass that it was for the space of many hours before Moses did again receive his natural strength like unto man; and he said unto himself: Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/moses/1?lang=eng&id=p10#p10

Moses exhibits pride as the prince of Egypt - never having giving thought to his comparative nothingness in the face of God's work.

When he is confronted by Satan, he tries to face him man-to-man and becomes afraid, only overcoming the enemy in appealing to the Lord for help.

12 And it came to pass that when Moses had said these words, behold, Satan came tempting him, saying: Moses, son of man, worship me.

13 And it came to pass that Moses looked upon Satan and said: Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten; and where is thy glory, that I should worship thee?

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/moses/1?lang=eng&id=p12-p13#p12

18 And again Moses said: I will not cease to call upon God, I have other things to inquire of him: for his glory has been upon me, wherefore I can judge between him and thee. Depart hence, Satan.

19 And now, when Moses had said these words, Satan cried with a loud voice, and ranted upon the earth, and commanded, saying: I am the Only Begotten, worship me.

20 And it came to pass that Moses began to fear exceedingly; and as he began to fear, he saw the bitterness of hell. Nevertheless, calling upon God, he received strength, and he commanded, saying: Depart from me, Satan, for this one God only will I worship, which is the God of glory.

21 And now Satan began to tremble, and the earth shook; and Moses received strength, and called upon God, saying: In the name of the Only Begotten, depart hence, Satan.

22 And it came to pass that Satan cried with a loud voice, with weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth; and he departed hence, even from the presence of Moses, that he beheld him not.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/moses/1?lang=eng&id=p18-p22#p18

Moses learns that the Lord drives away Satan where we can not. In so many things, we must appeal to Christ and acknowledge him to be rescued.

Moses also teaches again in a rather harsh way that God must always be acknowledged. The great prophet would never cross over into the promised land that he was shown:

51 Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel.

52 Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/deut/32?lang=eng&id=p51-p52#p51

It was pride that Moses said that he struck the rock and brought forth water rather than the Lord. That pride will get us on the wrong side of God and God withholds associated blessings.

We want the blessings that the Lord can give? Obey him and acknowledge his doings.

Pride to Hubris to Destruction

Any discussion of pride ultimately will find the words of the late prophet Ezra Taft Benson on the subject.

May I now discuss a subject of grave concern that deserves deeper development than we have time. It is the subject of pride.

In the scriptures there is no such thing as righteous pride. It is always considered as a sin. We are not speaking of a wholesome view of self-worth, which is best established by a close relationship with God. But we are speaking of pride as the universal sin, as someone has described it.

Mormon writes that “the pride of this nation, or the people of the Nephites, hath proven their destruction.” (Moro. 8:27.) The Lord says in the Doctrine and Covenants, “Beware of pride, lest ye become as the Nephites of old.” (D&C 38:39.)

Essentially, pride is a “my will” rather than “thy will” approach to life. The opposite of pride is humbleness, meekness, submissiveness (see Alma 13:28), or teachableness.

Cleansing the Inner Vessel - Ezra Taft Benson - https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1986/04/cleansing-the-inner-vessel?lang=eng

This is a process spelled out by BYU's Richard Draper in a 1997 paper he authored called Hubris and Atē : A Latter-day Warning from the Book of Mormon: A Latter-day Warning from the Book of Mormon, from which most of the rest of this talk is drawn.

It shows that pride leads to hubris, the attempt by individuals and nations to become a law unto themselves, and that the consequence of hubris is ate (ah-tay), a spiritual blindness that impels the individual or society toward its doom.

The verb form of the [Greek] word, hubrizo, expressed arrogant conduct and scorn, which led to the harm, damage, injury, rough handling, or maltreatment of another. The basis of such behavior was self-conceit and a lack of fear or reverence toward the gods, which led to defiant insolence and deliberate violation of their will. In this light, hubris is an anti-god state of mind which expresses itself in deliberately profane activities.

We are shown an inevitable sequence of events. Power breeds insolence and crime, which brings judgment and retribution. But the retribution comes directly as a result of the activities of the individuals: they bring it about by their own blindness. Hubris leads to ate and then to ruin.

In sum, hubris can be translated as pride, that is, self-conceit, and the acts that grow out of that conceit. Therefore, the word catches the idea of both the attitude which drives an individual to commit defiant acts against the will of the gods and the acts themselves. Eventually, pride leads one to commit that one last act-an act of wanton deliberate rebellion possible only with a knowledge of the desires of the gods-which unleashed irreversible divine wrath. Here we see the intertwining of pride, hubris, and ate. Pride is not hubris but rather the evil disposition on which the sin is grounded and by which it is fueled. Pride does not necessarily lead to hubris. Yet one cannot commit hubris without first being filled with pride.

From a Book of Mormon perspective, we can define ate as the point at which a person or a people has become fully ripe in iniquity. At that moment they come under the judgment of a just God from whom there is no escape, for "the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men; for he will not suffer that the wicked shall destroy the righteous" (I Nephi 22: 16). The Book of Mormon prophets feared that such a condition would come upon their people. Lehi warned: "For the hardness of your hearts the Lord your God [will] come out in the fulness of his wrath upon you, that ye be cut off and destroyed forever" (2 Nephi 1:17).

Paul wrote: "For it [i.e., repentance] is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame" (Hebrews 6:4-8). Alma warned his son, Corianton, "If ye deny the Holy Ghost when it once has had place in you, and ye know that ye deny it, behold, this is a sin which is unpardonable" (Alma 39:6).

According to the Prophet Joseph Smith a man commits such a sin (what this paper terms hubris) when he accepts the gospel, receives spiritually confirmed knowledge of the divinity of Christ, and then denies "the new and everlasting covenant by which he was sanctified, calling it an unholy thing, and doing despite to the Spirit of grace." For such there is no repentance because such offenders break the law in seeking to become a law unto themselves. They willfully abide in sin continually, and therefore "cannot be sanctified by law, neither by mercy, justice, nor judgment. Therefore, they must remain filthy still" (D&C 88:35).

The Book of Mormon describes conditions when these people get into power. They begin by condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the world, and, moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills. (Helaman 7:5) -

Note that they attempt to reorder society so that they can do "according to their own wills." They are willing to destroy the righteous if necessary. Nothing is to get in their way.

This point is important. Pride eventually propels the proud to fight against God and his people-to commit hubris. They are like their master, the dark Lord, who boasted in his heart, "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north" (Isaiah 14: 13). Like Satan, the proud seek the power and glory that belongs to God by destroying human agency. It is little wonder that such eventually find themselves the object of divine wrath.

As will be shown below, God punishes overweening ambition. There is a dark side to this fact: God actually assists in the move to destruction. But to allow such an idea to be troublesome is to misunderstand, as the Greeks did, the nature of God's judgment and its attendant curses. They viewed the gods as actively sending the delusions which infatuated the soul, encouraging it along the paths of self-ruin. Thus ate was an active agent of the gods which locked the individual on a course of destruction; it was the doom pronounced by the gods from which there was no turning back, no forgiveness. In reality God does not send delusions. He works to save humankind. But the Greeks did get one point right. When a people commit hubris, they will find that God is an agent of destruction. The reason is simple.

Before all else, God is a God of justice (Alma 42:25). He cannot look upon sin with any degree of allowance. The result of sin, as Paul states, is death - being cut off from the presence of God and thereafter forfeiting eternal life (Romans 6:23; see also 2 Nephi 2: 17-20; Alma 42:9). What options are left to God when a people reject him? The dilemma, noted in the Book of Mormon, becomes clear in the call of Isaiah. Here the Lord commands Isaiah to go tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and convert, and be healed. (Isaiah 6:9-10)

The command seems, incongruous to the usual work of God until we realize how Isaiah was to fulfill the commandment. It was, ironically, by proclaiming, not withholding, the gospel of salvation to Israel.

It was, ironically, by proclaiming, not withholding, the gospel of salvation to Israel. Here we see the critical significance of Isaiah's ministry. Israel was at the point at which one more rejection of the truth would condemn them fully to the judgment of the divine. The dilemma of the prophet was that there was no way to save Israel except by the very word that would condemn them. This allows us to understand more properly the nature of hubris. This sin is committed not when God takes away the opportunity to repent, be forgiven, and come to him, but when he allows the opportunity and it is willfully rejected. Ate, a kind of spiritual blindness, results. God delivers offenders "to the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds unto their being brought down into captivity, and also into destruction, both temporally and spiritually, according to the captivity of the devil" (l Nephi 14:7).

In the case of the Jaredites, "the Spirit of the Lord had ceased striving with them, and Satan had full power over the hearts of the people; for they were given up unto the hardness of their hearts, and the blindness of their minds that they might be destroyed" (Ether 15: 19). This is ate at full play. The Lord withdrew his Spirit because the people had blinded their minds and hardened their hearts, and willed it that way. The result was self-destruction. In this way God can be said to be the ready helper to those who insist on ruin. But what other choice does he have? If he were to withhold the gospel, then the unjust could honestly say that his judgment upon them was not fair. One overriding principle revealed clearly in the Old Testament is that the Lord will always vindicate himself such that no unjust judgment can righteously be made against him.15 He will allow both individuals and nations to fall before he will permit his integrity to be questioned. But in doing so he participates in the destruction of the rebellious.

The Book of Mormon testifies clearly of this point. Nephi affirmed that he has seen the destruction of his people and, therefore, knew why they would be destroyed: "for the reward of their pride [hubris] and their foolishness [ate] they shall reap destruction …. For the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with man then cometh speedy destruction" (2 Nephi 26: 10-11). Such destruction is ultimately spiritual, though it often expresses itself first in the physical reality of temporal ruin.

The Lord himself has underscored the point: Cursed shall be the land, yea, this land, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, unto destruction, which do wickedly, when they are fully ripe; and as I have said so shall it be; for this is the cursing and the blessing of God upon the land, for the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. (Alma 45:16; cf. Alma 37:28; Ether 2:15)

Obedience brings blessings: "Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ" (Ether 2: 12). But disobedience brings cursings: "Yea, and cursed be the land forever and ever unto those workers of darkness and secret combinations, even unto destruction, except they repent before they are fully ripe" (Alma 37:31). When iniquity ripens fully the cursings come. But what constitutes being ripe in iniquity? The Book of Mormon gives specific conditions: (1) when "the voice of this people should choose iniquity" (Alma 10: 19); (2) when the people "turn aside the just for a thing of naught and revile against that which is good, and say that it is of no worth" (2 Nephi 28:16); (3) when they reject "every word of God" (l Nephi 17:35); and (4) "when [they] shall cast out the righteous from among [them], then shall [they] be ripe for destruction" (Helaman 13:14).

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol3/iss2/2/

Have you had about enough of Brother Porter? He has much more to say in his paper and I recommend it all, which you can find once I put up my text of this talk on the web.

Many of us have hubris in relation to God, often making demands of him, couched in terms of a misplaced love or faith. Some feel that God must bring our "surrendered" selves into the celestial realm as opposed to living up to our responsibility to meet established standards of exalting qualification. If such a surrender doesn't include our own labor of growing obedience toward the Lord's purposes for all of his children, in what righteous actors can the Lord's exalting trust be placed?

The Sweet-and-Sour Recollection of "I am a Child of God"

So, let us keep singing "I am a Child of God" and preaching the precepts found in the lyrics. We all need reminders of who we are and what God expects us to do and become, even if the words are an foul-tasting indictment of those whose pride and hubris against God have brought on them the ate of discontent and personal destruction. Nevertheless, let us keep singing the song and remember to do "all that I [we] must do to live with him someday."

The priestly blessing - https://www.hebrew4christians.com/Blessings/Synagogue_Blessings/Priestly_Blessing/priestly_blessing.html#loaded

Sources

A treatsie on the concept of hubris on the Nephites and Jaredites - https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=jbms

There was also the seminal follow-up talk from President Benson: Beware of Pride - https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1989/04/beware-of-pride?lang=eng